Code / Appnel Solutions 

Open Source Is Not Just a License

Last week during a discussion about implementing a dispatcher in MTOS that Reed Cartwright proposed I made some comments about what direction the code an architecture should go that a number of people seemed to like. I thought I’d repost them here.

IMHO, there are other more important reasons for migrating away from homebrew solutions and to module in CPAN that exist beyond MTOS.

One is effectively leveraging resources. What does MT gain from having its own application framework? (I can ask this same question of JavaScript frameworks and some other things in MT.) How will that differentiate MT from other tools? How does it improve the user experience or get more people using the tool? It doesn’t. Could the engineering resources of Six Apart and this community be put to use on other things where the questions are true or an alternate does not exist? I’m pretty sure the answer to that is yes. So if there is a passionate community of developers that have put a lot of time, effort and field testing in to a library that provides essentially that same functionality, I’m all for it so we can work on the things that really need it.

Another is in better embracing open source. While my first point is more operational, this one is more PR. Releasing MT under the GPL is a good first step, but there is still a certain level of mistrust (I’m not suggesting that its founded or not) nor are open source developers knock[ing] down the MTOS doors to contribute. Drawing in developers from other communities with some of the tools they are already familiar with and using would IMHO contribute to generating more interest and breaking done the walls that I believe many believe surround MT. Conversely taking parts of MT that don’t exist in the Perl/CPAN world (the template engine, registry, Promise, FileMgr ) and breaking them off as their own standalone library would have a similar effect in my experience. Developers are more likely to write MT like apps that borrow from how it works indirectly learning about MT and perhaps contributing back to its development. Doing both of these clearly demonstrate that Six Apart is serious about MT as open source software and that there is something to gain by contributing.

I think the points you make are valid for Open Source in general and, perhaps, pertinent to MTOS in particular at this stage.

There is a certain amount of scepticism about motives and a certain amount of bandstanding with people backing their 'teams' and cheering them on.

From the point of view of somebody who is very much just a user, I welcome not only another good application being made available, but would hope that MTOS gets good attention and help from the Open Source community because by so doing, end users are going to have more choice.

That may sound selfish (which it is) and there are obviously only so many developers with so much time, but there seems to be a progression towards a small number of CMS/blog applications which are universally recognised as good, followed by an increasing number of what are beginning to appear as 'also rans'.

It may be that this is just natural selection and that spreading talents more thinly will exacerbate this, but your ideas of maximising use and re-use and sharing seem only to make sense.

I am trying MTOS and genuinely enjoying it and want it to thrive. If enough developers get to the stage of making it do everything I could wish for in a CMS/blog, I shall leave my wife and run away with MTOS and live happily ever after.